


Input Transformation

by Elke Tanzer (elke_tanzer)



Category: Snow Queen Series - Joan D. Vinge
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elke_tanzer/pseuds/Elke%20Tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character vignette of Fate Ravenglass, a small mask and dawning transformations. Includes slight appearances by Jerusha and Ananke, set prior to and during the events of The Snow Queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Input Transformation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eisoj5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisoj5/gifts).



The remaining half of the loose string of faceted beads slips through her fingers, and she hopes that perhaps this time, she'd be lucky, and have been holding the strand over the tray as the beads fell. _Transfer..._

She tries to listen for the telltale clatter of the beads scattering across her shop floor, refusing to regret how long it will take her to find and collect them again, mostly by touch, but she can’t quite catch the sound...

Instead, a sudden onslaught of bright colors, loud sounds and unfamiliar shapes threatens to overwhelm. She wonders yet again if the bold richness of her trance-visions is more or less intense than the process might be for other sibyls, and once again she dampens that thought down, and tries to simply center her mind. She is after all only a vessel, and the trance-state will do as it likes with her, and be for her as it pleases itself to be. She tries to be selfless, but in the depths of her secret self, she admits that she somewhat savors the intensity, even as her trance-dream threatens to overwhelm her senses...

She’s unable to judge time within the trance, but information flows through her, some answers she knows just as clearly as she knows her own fingertips, coupled somehow with other information she’s never imagined, words that make no sense and may not even be in any language she recognizes. This is familiar, comforting in a way, and she lets the flow wash over her and through her.

One of the beings... people... in her trance-dream looks familiar. She can't quite place him, but somehow he seems familiar. Has she seen him before in Carbuncle? In another trance? Or will she meet him in future?

She's left wondering, unable to place him, and cries out as she comes out of it, the sudden shift of existing in a nowhere elsewhere to existing once again only in her own mind and body exacting its usual toll. She gasps, then breathes deep, trying to center herself within herself again.

She’s so glad to have the relative privacy of her comfortable, small shop. When she’s alone, surrounded by her forgiving baubles, feathers and beads, not a soul living in the whole of Carbuncle need bear witness her sibyl Transfers.

She doesn’t allow herself to consider what would happen if she’s found out. She was called, and Carbuncle is her home, and somehow, she doesn’t quite know how or why but she knows that Carbuncle needs her to be here, and so here she is.

She dips her fingertips into the tray, and sure enough, this time she’s been lucky, and the beads are almost all still on their string, and the remaining few are rattling loose in the tray, not scattered and rattling about underfoot. She smiles to herself, and with deft, quick motions, gets back to her work.

Somehow she suspects that this small half-mask is for someone specific. Although she doesn't yet know who, she is certain that it must be finished, and that somehow, it will find its way to the right person to wear it.

 

The next Transfer wakes her from a sound slumber, and as she slips into it, she’s again glad that her profession lets her keep her own schedule as she pleases, since she always seems to crave a mid-morning nap after an interrupted night. And there have been more and more interrupted nights, lately. _Transfer..._

 

The trance-dream this time is as baffling as usual, and yet again different from others before, but she takes in as much as she is able, trying to hold fast the images as her trance-dream swirls across her mind. These odd combinations of strange shapes and textures and shades, if she can remember their echoes, will provide inspiration upon inspiration for the next masks she designs... but she'll never reveal the wellspring of her inspirations.

As she tries to center herself beneath the flow of the Transfer, as the answers bubble up within her and tumble from her within the dream, she can’t help wondering if she will ever find beads that match the colors of the moons that hang in this particular sky of her dream-trances... wondering if any feathers anywhere could be so bold and bright, or if the colors of this dream are simply more vivid than anything could ever really be, anywhere... once again, thanks to the gift of the trance, information flows through her of its own accord.

She comes out of the Transfer fairly easily this time, but then, she often does when she’s comfortably tucked into her bed from the start. That still doesn’t mean she’ll be able to fall back to sleep easily. Grumbling only slightly, she makes her way to her stove by feel and by memory, and puts on water to heat to make some of her morning herbal infusion. She might as well get back to work on the half-mask than try to find sleep again.

She’s partway through feathering an accent swirl when yet another Transfer takes her. Lately it's been happening more and more often. She sighs, and opens herself to it. Once again, baffling images swirl around her, brighter than her senses know how to interpret, but she realizes suddenly that this is another of the rare times when she’s given the opportunity to revisit a dream-trance place. The bright moons are once again overhead, and the feel of the air, the taste of the place, is familiar. So soon? It’s seldom so soon, a revisit. She centers herself past her surprise, sinking into the flow of information, opening her mind and speaking the wisdom... her own, and not her own.

But beneath all of that, she wonders again, as she has more and more often lately, if the places of her dream-trances aren’t wholly in her sibyl-fueled imagination... if somehow, they must exist outside of herself, outside of her Transfers, perhaps outside Tiamat entirely, somewhere out in the wide field of stars.

She cries out as the trance ends, and only sighs a little bit as she bends to collect her scattered feathers. They’re soft against her fingertips, and she cups them gently in her palm as though they’re as fragile as the eggs that hatched their original owners. She smooths their edges back to elegant sweeps and curves, the repetitive motion calming and familiar.

The days pass more quickly as the Change approaches. The little half-mask is long-completed, but Fate keeps it separate from the rows upon rows of finished masks lining her shop's walls and shelves. It's packaged carefully, and set aside.

When the Change is upon the city, the Blues sweep through the street, and Fate presents herself and her shop as inoffensively and calmly as possible, as she always does, but all the while, there's something distinctly tickling in the back of her mind about the one woman's voice directing the Blues, perhaps a half-remembered reflection of a dream.

From the sounds of things, the Blues aren't finding whatever trouble they're looking for... but there's something... suddenly she realizes what she's hearing in that voice. It's the sound of the shapes and the textures of the small half-mask, the faceted lines and angles catching the light and sending it out again just as brightly, and the chaotic feathered swirls surrounding all.

Before the Blues leave, Fate takes a moment to seek her out, and tucks the small, plainly-wrapped package into her hesitant hand with a soft murmur, an assurance that it’s nothing sinister and only a simple token of thanks, one woman to another. Her gentle words seem to get past the Blue's reticence, and the token is accepted. Fate is content.

Even though she’s fairly certain the Blue will have far too many thankless duties come Mask Night, perhaps she’ll wear the sparkling half-mask sometime after all, perhaps even for a moment on some other night, to shed the weight of her responsibilities and the weight of being herself, just for a little while.

She'd never try to explain it to anyone, but Fate knows, knows deep in her bones, just as certainly as she knows that Carbuncle needs her sibyl gifts, that the Change catches up into itself whoever it will, even Blues, and that masks have a way of unmasking changing selves.


End file.
